Ironwoman

I recently read an article about a woman that I find to be very inspiring.  Her name is Kristin McQueen, and here's her story:

Ten years ago Kristin was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer.  Since then, she has had fifteen major surgeries and has undergone various cancer treatments including radiation on her brain.  To date, she has finished seventeen marathons and nine full Ironman competitions.  She has continued to train during her fight with cancer, she says, because when she's out there on the road she is in control, not cancer.  I think that's pretty badass. 

“Ironman is so much more than an endurance race," she says. "It is not about simply propelling myself 140.6 miles for kicks, it’s about challenging my limits and seeing what’s possible. It’s about reclaiming my body after five neck surgeries, two rounds of radiation, ten brain surgeries, and a slew of acquired physical challenges. It’s about not giving into all the limitations that cancer and its buddies have imposed on me, but viewing them as challenges that ultimately make the race even sweeter by overcoming them. It’s about going from not being able to open my eyes without getting sick, having difficulty sitting upright and being too weak to stand by myself to completing one of the ultimate tests of human endurance. It’s about raising money so that nobody else has to go through what I have. It’s about remembering those who have passed and honoring those who fight every day to live a 'normal' life despite a disease that tries to tear them down.”

As anyone who follows Ironman competitions knows, the Ironman Championship is held in October each year in Kona, Hawaii, and participants in the race have to qualify to enter.  It's "the big one," the granddaddy of all triathlons and one of the most rigorous events in sporting.

This year, the World Triathlon Corporation is giving seven athletes the opportunity to race at Kona though a program called Kona Inspired.  Each entrant in the contest has uploaded a 90-second video showing how their story relates to the theme of the contest, which is "Anything is Possible," and those who get the most votes will get to enter the race.  Kristin wants one of those slots.

If you are also inspired by this Ironwoman, here's how you can help, in three quick and easy steps:

1. Watch this video.
2. Vote for Kristin every day between now and May 7, 2013.
3. Share the info on Facebook and Twitter and any other social media feeds you have - and email the link out to others who may not be into social media.  Ask everyone you know to vote for Kristin!

Kristin, sporting a "SUCK IT, CANCER" message during a race

For at least a dozen years before he got sick, my dad always called or emailed me ahead of time to alert me to whenever an Ironman triathlon was coming on TV so I could watch, and many times he called me on the phone during the race so we could talk about it.  Every single time I have watched an Ironman on TV, I have cried.  I don't mind admitting it; I find not only the talent but also (and probably especially) the dedication and just the raw guts that it takes to go the distance so awe-inspiring, but it's the stories of the back-of-the-packers that get me going every time.  Even if you're not an Ironman fan (an Ironfan?), you know the storyline: the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I'm not sure which trumps which: the tears of the competitors who realize they will not be able to finish - or the tears of those who are crossing the finish line.  Either way, I can't imagine watching the race without being affected by those stories.

My dad wanted so badly to finish an Ironman competition; just a few days before he got sick - which was just a couple of weeks before his debut Ironman - he said he hoped to finish the event in less than twelve hours but that he would be happy just to finish at all.  After months of training and miles and miles on the road and in the pool, his chance to compete in the Ironman-North Carolina in 2010 was stolen from him by cancer, so unbelievably sad and so damn unfair.  As Kristin says, "Cancer is bullshit!"

Kristin has succeeded in finishing an Ironman - in fact, nine of them!  Most people feel they are giving their all when they finish a 5K, even if they are 100% healthy; Kristin has far surpassed that, while battling cancer. By any standard, she is already an Ironwoman, worthy of great respect and admiration for her athletic accomplishments.  The championship race in Kona, though, is within her reach, and I can't think of anyone who better embodies the idea that anything is possible.  With our help, she can make it there.

Good luck, Kristin; cancer can indeed SUCK IT!  I look forward to watching you amongst the other participants in the race on TV in October.  I can guarantee that I'll be watching - and crying.

Dog Tags

Sometimes when I think back to during the time when my dad was sick, I remember a detail that I had forgotten or overlooked in my memories before.  

Today I remembered his dog tags.

When I was growing up, whenever I asked my dad about his experience serving in Vietnam, he always talked about how his job there was to guard a building with weapons in it, often on an overnight shift.  

My dad was never a "night owl;" as far back as I can remember, he was much more of a morning person, and I guess that was true when he was in the service, too, because he often commented when he talked about that time about how hard it was for him to stay awake on his overnight shifts.  He said he usually ran around and around the building he was assigned to guard so that he would stay awake and alert during those shifts.  The only problem with this plan, he reported, was that he had to wear his dog tags at all times and, as they hung from the chain around his neck, they drove him crazy bouncing against his chest as he ran.  Ever the improviser, though, he thought of a solution to this problem too: he took the dog tags off from around his neck and put them in his pants - in his jock strap, to be exact. 

It's kind of funny to think that a person can be proud of someone else before that person was even born or before they knew each other, but I know it's possible, because, picturing my dad as a young soldier in a foreign land, before I was born, doing what he had to do to get his job done and to defend our country, I feel such a sense of pride and respect, the same pride and respect that I have had for him throughout my life. 

But those dog tags from Dad's days in Vietnam aren't the ones I think about most often these days.  The dog tags on my mind are the ones that Dad wore on a chain around his neck as a 66 year-old man as he trained for the Ironman triathlon.  He tucked those into his shirt as he rode his bike or ran, and, the day before he became disoriented on a run and our campaign against his brain cancer began, the chain that held those dog tags broke.  And so, on that fateful day, he set out for the first time in many months without any form of identification at all.  

I think when most people think about dog tags, they think about toughness.  That's what I think about, too, because it was that, along with his strength and resilience that day that allowed Dad to dig deep enough so that, even in his state of confusion coming from the tumor the size of a racquetball in his brain, he could remember not just his home phone number (which was called first by the police but went unanswered because my mom was out of town) but also my aunt's cell phone number, which he also recalled and then gave to the police who had been called to the scene because he somehow also remembered that my mom was out of town that day and realized he needed to call someone local.

I have spent time, some while Dad was sick and even more since he went on ahead, thinking about how things would have likely gone had he not had the fortitude to pull out that information in those few moments before he was taken to the hospital by ambulance, before he had a couple of seizures, and before he quit breathing and had to be put on life support temporarily until he could be stabilized.  It is nothing short of terrifying to think that all of that would have been going on and no one in our family would have been able to be notified so that we could all get there to be with him.  It's horrifying to think about the fact that he would have been a Missing Person for an undetermined amount of time, because, with my mom out of town overnight that night, it is highly likely that no one would have realized that he didn't make it home after his run that afternoon.  We would not have known that anything out of the ordinary was going on.  Again and again, it hits me that, even with as bad as it was when he first got sick and throughout his illness, it could have been worse.  At least we knew where he was, and what was going on with him, and at least we were able to be with him. 

Dad, wearing the dog tags, competing in what ended up being his last race, one month prior to his diagnosis of brain cancer

In the days just before and just after his surgery, Dad worried a lot about what he called "loose ends."  As it would be for any of us whose life was put on hold in the blink of an eye, it was unnerving and extremely anxiety-causing for Dad that he had not been able to prepare for the time he was having to miss work and everything else for which he considered himself to be responsible.  In the midst of the constant stream of worries he had about his health and about needing to take care of the responsibilities in his personal and professional roles in life, he said he wanted to get the chain that had held his dog tags fixed, "so that I'll have it ready as soon as I can get back on the road."

And so, sitting in the hospital room with him in the Neuro-ICU, I searched on the Internet and found a company that sold replacement chains and ordered one for him; he was visibly relieved when I told him that a new chain was being sent to him in the mail.  And that's where the meaning of those dog tags deepens in our story; instead of standing only for toughness, Dad's dog tags also represented Hopefulness, and we desperately needed everything we could get to bolster both of those qualities as we entered into a more grueling battle than any of us could even imagine at that point.

If You Knew

If you knew that you probably wouldn't be here next week, next month, or next year, would you do things differently?  

Would you slow down and spend more time talking and just hanging out with the ones you love, would you rush around trying to pack in everything you could into the time you had left, or would you jet off to some remote location and sip cool drinks on a sunny beach somewhere?  Would you leave your work behind, choosing to treat each day as a vacation, or would you double-time it in an effort to finish what you'd started, in hopes of clearing your desk?  

I think sometimes people go through life just trying to get through the daily grind, setting a goal each day just to make it to 5:00 and hoping to build up enough vacation days to take some time off a few times a year. It's a easy pattern to get into, for sure.  That wasn't my dad at all, though.  He regularly set goals for lots of things.  He liked quotes that inspired action, like "A goal without a plan is just a wish" and "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe" and of course his favorite, "JUST DO IT!"  In essence, he was a roller-coaster guy, not a merry-go-round guy:

              "I like the roller coaster; you get more out of it!"

Through my dad, I learned while growing up to believe that anything was possible through hard work and perseverance.  And, for the most part, I feel like that held true in my life, up until the time he got sick.  

But I have to say that, had he known his days were numbered before that awful day two years ago this month when he was taken to the hospital by ambulance and the trial of our lives began, I don't believe he would have done many things differently.  

For all the questions and the if-then deliberations in my mind from over the last few months of Dad's life, there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain: if life is measured by adventure, my dad had a full one. 

Throughout his life, my dad identified things in himself that he wanted to change and then he made those changes.  In fact, thinking back to one of those things from when I was a teenager makes me smile even today:

About the time I turned 15, my dad told me that he had read somewhere that research had shown that a teenaged girl whose father told her at least once a day that he loved her was much more likely to graduate in the top of her class and to be happy long-term in life.  He said he knew that my sisters and I knew that he loved us but that he wasn't sure of exactly how often he told us out loud that he did, and so, just in case (another favorite expression of his), he was going to set a goal to say it to us every day at least until the time we graduated from high school.  ("I'll still say it to you after that, but you'll be away at college so it may not be quite as often," he said to further explain his plan.)  He didn't go into detail as to how he was going to be sure that he remembered to say it, but I knew him well enough to know that he would have some sort of system.  And sure enough, the next time I got into his car, I saw what it was:  he had placed a sticky note on the dashboard of his car, and on it he had written "Tell the girls I love them." Apparently the system worked, because, as far as I can remember, he told us that every day until we left home and every time he talked to us after that.

The last email I ever got from my dad was about planning for new adventures as he looked ahead to what he was going to do after he had completed the Ironman triathlon in which he was scheduled to compete but didn't get to.  Here's what he wrote in his typical stream-of-consciousness type of email:

From: Bill Bullard <bbullard@hurleyandassociates.com]]]]>

Sent: Wed, September 29, 2010 2:38:15 PM

Subject: Iron man

This will probably jinks it, but my foot is much better. I have 4 training wks to go---   Plan is to do three long runs (app3 hrs), 3 long bikes (80-100 miles and three long swims of about 2 miles each. In between stuff doesn’t matter much, I am told. If I can do these I should be fine, although walking will be part of the Plan which it is for most anyone not really competing. Nice to do around 14 hrs but just to finish is okay. Need to find a tattoo place in Calif to get Ironman logo on my calf. Lee gets one next yrr

Love ur crazy//Dad

told mom this would be the only one. Got to think of a new adventure—but no heights or extreme cold.

Thinking about the way that my dad lived his life, I see clearly that he didn't need a terminal prognosis to define his priorities or his goals.  He never sat it out, he always gave it his all, and he enjoyed every day of his life.  And if adversity is the test by which character is revealed, then I'm proud to say that my dad passed the test with flying colors.

Mark of Honor

During the months while my dad was in training for the Ironman triathlon before he was diagnosed with cancer, he mentioned several times that he was thinking about getting a tattoo after he finished the race to celebrate his achievement.  He said that he wanted to get the Ironman logo on his ankle.  Finishing the Ironman was definitely a Bucket List item for him, and we supported his plan to get inked after such an impressive accomplishment.

In the days before and just after the time when he had surgery and when we got the diagnosis, he brought up the subject of the tattoo again, wondering aloud if it would seem like a misrepresentation if he went ahead and got the Ironman symbol on his leg even if he wasn’t able to complete in the event.  I can still recall the feeling of the precariousness of the air in his room in the Neuro-ICU as I think back to the last conversation I had with him about the subject.  “I’d hate to get it done and then have people ask me about it and then I’d have to say I didn’t really do it,” he said to my sister Jennifer and me, certainly picturing himself - as did we and as we surely wanted him to do – years down the road, reminiscing about his battle with brain cancer as a thing in the past.  

“What if we get one too – would that make you want to do it?” Jennifer asked him.  

“What?? Y’all can’t get one!  It’s only for Ironman athletes!!”  he said, incredulous at the apparent ludicrousness of the idea.  We watched him for a minute as he seemed to be working something out in his head and then he said dispiritedly, “I guess I don’t need to get one either.”  The look in his eyes and the emotion in his voice were heartbreaking, and, looking back, such a harbinger of things to come as he was forced to rewrite his Bucket List again and again due to his declining health.

On the Saturday after my dad went on ahead, we held a memorial celebration in his honor.  I don’t recall how the topic of tattoos came up then as I talked to my mom’s cousin and her husband, but I do remember the stunned look on their faces when I told them that my sisters, my mom, and I were discussing getting a memorial tattoo.  They exchanged a look that appeared to me to be one of horror and pity, one that said, “They are in shock but hopefully they won’t do anything CRAZY!”   I didn’t care, though; like everything my family had been through over the eleven weeks preceding that moment in time, we knew that our situation, our experience, and our perspective were unique, something that no one else would ever totally understand or view as we did.  

Last summer, on our first family vacation without Dad, my sister Nancy brought up the idea again, and my oldest daughter started saying that she wanted to be in on the commemorative inking as well.  The problem was that we weren’t sure of the design we wanted to get or where on our bodies we wanted to get it.  We went back and forth with thoughts and ideas; the frontrunner was a picture of a running stickman that would go on the back of each of our left shoulders.  Still, though, there was some uncertainty, or at least some inaction, and the plan remained inert.

Over the course of the last year, in the time span from one family vacation to another, my sisters, my mom, my daughter, and I all agreed that we liked the idea of having the image be consist of a depiction of the way Dad typically signed off when he wrote notes and messages to people, with two lower-case printed b’s followed by two forward slash marks as an accentuation or underscoring of his initials.  We also decided, based on an astute comment made by my youngest sister Nancy’s best friend, that we wanted to have the tattoo in a place on our bodies where we could easily see it, with the idea that that could bring comfort and inspiration to each of us.

And so, last week, on the day we all gathered in California, three of us decided to take the plunge – Nancy, my daughter Maddie, and me.  My mom and my middle sister Jennifer went with us to the tattoo parlor (they are still considering getting ink and plan to use the same design if they decide to go ahead with the idea at some point), and Mom brought along several samples of things that Dad had written to show the tattoo artist, who actually traced Dad’s writing for the pattern she used on all three of us.

Nancy and I opted to get the design done in navy blue, Dad’s favorite color, and Maddie chose black, which I thought was funny because Dad often wore those two colors together when he ran (“Real runners don’t wear matching outfits!” he claimed.).  All three of us decided to get the design placed facing us, on the inside of our left wrist, since Dad was left-handed, and positioned slightly off-center, to symbolize Dad’s uniqueness.  In what I thought was a really cool and kindhearted gesture, the tattoo artist placed the sticky note that’s she’d used to make the template of the design on the table beside us so we could see it as we got it done.  One after the other, we were marked, in honor and in memory of the man who will always be as much a part of us as the ink on our wrists.

When my daughter told one of her friends what we'd done, her friend said,
"Some families plant a tree in someone's memory, but this is way cooler."

It's not an Ironman insignia, but I think this one was well earned and sits as a mark of honor too.

Time – Part 3

Continued from Time - Part 2 

Below is a trailer from a movie called “In Time” that came out last fall about a world in which time replaces money for currency and each person’s skin is marked with the amount of time they have left on this Earth.  I didn't see the movie (I think it actually bombed in theaters), but I find the concept of knowing how much time you have left to be thought-provoking.  It makes me wonder … How would you spend your time, if you knew how much of it you had left?  Would such a thing result in people being more purposeful or more selfish?  I'm not at all sure how that knowledge would that impact my own perspective.

Since the day of my dad’s diagnosis, I have thought a lot about the concept of time.  I constantly feel like I don’t have enough of it, just like Dad didn’t.  I’m not sure if that is a normal part of grief; I just know it’s a thought that pops into my head on a regular basis and it’s pretty disturbing.

As far back as I can remember, my dad hated to be late.  Maybe it was tied to competitiveness or maybe that’s why he was such a talented athlete; he frequently strategized about improving his race time and was always so relieved when he achieved his “time goal” in a race.

Just a few days after Dad went on ahead, my mom asked my husband to get Dad’s car ready to be sold.  I remember thinking at the time that I didn’t understand what the rush was; I wasn’t particularly attached to his car but was horrified at the idea that Mom might start getting rid of Dad’s stuff that soon.  When I asked her about her reasoning, what she said almost brought me to my knees in grief and sorrow: because Dad was frequently out of town during the week traveling on business, she said she was used to his car not being in the driveway most of the time and that if the car wasn’t there, she hoped she could just pretend that he was away on a business trip instead of gone forever.

With that, we all agreed it was fine for her to sell the car.  As my husband was cleaning it out, he came across several things that brought a smile to my lips and tears to my eye at the same time:  a huge bottle of Advil (always trying to ward away the soreness from a hard workout), several pads of sticky notes (which had really excited Dad when they first came out around 1980), tons of change (which he tended to stash everywhere), and – the icing on the cake – a mini-tape recorder on which he recorded messages to himself while he was driving.

I remember when those little recorders first came out on the market many years ago when I was a teenager; Dad was so excited to get one as he said that was he could just let it record while he talked to himself as he drove.  He continued this practice in the current day, especially on long drives during which he would plan and make lists of things he wanted to remember or needed to do later.

My husband, my siblings, my mom, and I stood in the cold of my parents’ garage that day, and I pushed the Play button on the recorder.  Dad’s voice, salve for our wounds that stung but was comforting at the same time.  It was oddly heartening to listen to the flurry of segmented messages he had recorded for himself in brief stints.  Many things he said were related to his job: reminders to call customers, things to put in his next presentation, info about the grain trade market.  Some were of a personal nature, including one that stood out to us:  He said, “Time myself walking a mile; maybe go to the track.”  I knew the background on this statement for him was that he wanted to calculate his projected time for completing the marathon portion of the upcoming Ironman triathlon including any potential walk-breaks he might need to take along the way.  But, given what had happened since he had made that recording, his reference to time seemed so prophetic, so profound.  I know he didn’t have any idea that his time was very limited when he said those words, but, listening to them in the cold grayness of the garage that day and missing his so much already, I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart.

 More about my perspective:  Time - Part 4

Seizing the Moments

The last time I saw my dad healthy was on a big family vacation at Lake George in upstate New York.  As usual, we did a lot of hanging out on the trip ("binding"), which was great.  One of the activities we did during that time was to go to the Adirondack Extreme Adventure Course, an intense rope course composed of stunts involving zip-lines, Tarzan swings, hanging nets, wobbly bridges, and suspended logs.  Through an Internet search of things to do in the area, I found information about the park and encouraged others in the family to sign up.  Unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to the term "extreme" in the title beforehand. I also didn't realize just how high in the trees the majority of the course would be situated or how long the course was (we later found out it usually takes 3-4 hours to complete the course).  

When we got to the park, we were given instructions and a quick safety lesson, and then we lined up and started climbing.  I knew Dad was afraid of heights, but, as I said, I didn't think the course was going to be roughly twenty feet off the ground.  I was pretty nervous while we were on the course, both for my own sake and because of a few other people in the family whom I knew were struggling for various reasons, including Dad.  In the many athletic pursuits in which I had participated over the years with my dad, I had never felt such a sense of protectiveness towards him; he was the one who was typically having to assist me.  Dad was completely capable of managing the physical demands of the course - he was already in training for the Ironman triathlon at that point - but he was anxious about the distance to the ground.  He wasn't about to quit or even to admit that he was scared, though; that was a given.  As always, Dad stuck with it and finished, laughing and cutting up along the way.

No one could have possibly predicted what would be going on just 3 months later - or less than 3 months after that.  While Dad was sick, I often thought back to the time when I was watching him on the Adirondack course that day.  I could clearly remember feeling like I needed to safeguard him, to shield him or "spot him" on the bridges and ropes, maybe not as much from what was required of him along the course but more from his apprehensiveness; I didn't want him to be scared.  It was a weird kind of foreshadowing for the way we would have to guard and encourage him though the fear and instability during his fight with cancer.  

I often think about the last “this” or “that” for my dad – the last birthday card he sent me, the last time I talked to him on the phone, the last time we ran together, the last email and text he sent me.  Thinking about those things makes me so sad and, truth be told, afraid, almost to the point of being paranoid, because it leaves me wondering WHAT’S NEXT, what could be just around the corner at any point in time … I know that’s not productive, and probably not all that healthy, except that it’s part of this crazy grieving process, and I also know that it’s something I cannot avoid.

Thinking about “lasts” for my dad makes me think about the popular message Carpe Diem, seize the day.  I love the movie “Dead Poets Society” as much as the next person, but here’s what I’ve started to consider since my dad went on ahead:

People are always talking about living for the moment, enjoying each moment of each day, and trying to find joy in everything one does.  While I understand the sentiment behind this goal, I have to say that for me, the whole Carpe Diem thing doesn’t really fit.  Not all the time, and not for everything I do.  In fact, that message makes me feel like I’m falling short of something (Gratitude? Time? Perspective? Joy?) if I am not in a constant state of happiness, if I’m not smelling the roses every single second of every day.  I think it’s a good idea to have the perspective that today was a good day when one’s head hits the pillow at the end of each day, but, really, if I truly set out to live each day to its fullest, I wouldn’t be taking care of what needs to be done (going to work, occasionally cleaning the house, cooking supper, etc.).  It might make for an easier day that day, but on down the road, not so much.

I think it’s possible that a person who truly lives in such a seize-the-day state is faking it or lying, being reckless, and/or at least partially hovering close to some mental problems, in many cases.  From fighting traffic to balancing the checkbook to emptying the trash (don’t smell THOSE ROSES!) to scooping the litterbox, it’s inevitable that there are some things in life that aren’t all that!  But here’s the important part of this message:  THAT’S OK!  It doesn’t indicate weakness or failure or ingratitude or anything else.  Feeling the pain, complaining every once in a while about the grind, looking forward to the weekend doesn’t mean that one day we’ll be SORRY for anything.  

The author Dorothy Parker said, "I hate writing. I love having written."  That about sums up what I’m trying to say.  Life, and some of the things in it, are HARD sometimes.  And that’s ok to admit.  When I consider the whole “appreciate every minute of the day” thing, I think it’s so ironic that being expected to maintain that “I’m so lucky/everything is great” attitude 100% of the time just ends up being JUST ONE MORE THING on our to-do list, in the column of things that never gets to be crossed off, giving us something ELSE to worry about, to feel inadequate about, and to feel guilt over, a top-off of what could become an inevitable DOUBLE FAILURE.

I’m pretty sure that’s NOT the real message behind Carpe Diem.  I think we can and should choose to be grateful for what we have, make the most of every moment, and take a deep breath when things seem overwhelming.  I think we should appreciate the simple things in life, love one another, and do the best that we can in any situation.  I think we should Carpe whenever possible but that we shouldn’t feel guilty if that Carpe isn’t for the whole Diem.

I think time comes in two forms – Real Time, which involves the ins and outs, the struggles, the grind, the waiting in line, the countdown ‘til something else happens (5 p.m. Happy Hour, bedtime, vacation time, time to eat chocolate, etc.); and Good Time, the actual smelling-the-roses, savoring-the-coffee, basking-in-the-spender moments.  The spiritual times when we take it all in, whether we do so intentionally or accidentally.  It’s when we notice the magic, the goodness, the love, and the peace.  It’s counting your blessings, feeling lucky, no matter what the actual circumstances are.  It’s getting perspective.  Those are the moments we need to bookmark, to hoard in our memory banks for later, to seize, for just in case, for the future when we can look back and reflect on the goodness of life.

Bargaining

I heard a story once in which some children were playing ball when the ball accidentally got tossed over the fence into the next yard.  There was a young girl whom the other kids did not allow to play in their ball game because she had problems with her eyesight and with her balance, but she was happy enough just to have the job of going to retrieve the ball when needed.  Eager to play her part in the game when given the opportunity, she tediously climbed the fence and dropped down into the next yard.  Once there, she saw something in the shade underneath a big tree, and she called out “Here, Kitty!” to what she thought was a cat.  After getting no response, the girl picked up the ball, struggled back over the fence, and returned the ball to the other children.  The creature in the shade of the tree was actually a skunk, and, after the girl had climbed back over the fence, he sat there in silence, stunned by the friendly way she had called out to him, which was an extreme contrast to every other interaction he had ever had with a human.  He started thinking about how different his life would have been if he had been born different, if he were a cat or a dog instead of a skunk.  He even started to consider how great it would be if he were a young girl, even one with poor eyesight and coordination, but he couldn’t really go so far as to imagine that – it’s just too far-fetched of a fantasy to fathom.

Bargaining is one of the stages of Grief described in the writings of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.  The word itself is technically defined as “negotiating the terms and conditions of a transaction;” I see it as an attempt to gain control, and I have learned over the past nine months that at times it can be a valuable tool in figuring out how to cope with changes, disappointment, and sorrow.

The bargaining that my family and I did while Dad was sick, as part of what I later learned was our anticipatory grief process, was in the form of acting like we didn’t mind or really even notice that he couldn’t do many of the things that he did before his diagnosis, including working, driving, exercising, and even basic things like getting ready for the day, talking to people on the phone, and getting himself something to eat or drink.

We also bargained by letting ourselves believe that if we got what we thought was the best treatment possible for him, managed his medications and his care, had him go to rehab, and set up my parents’ house just right, Dad would get better.  We thought that if we gave it our all, we would get something in return, and, like a child who prioritizes in the letter to Santa according to what gift he or she wants the most, what we really wanted to be given was better health, and a better quality of life, for Dad.

A little further down the road, we even bargained by saying that we’d feel so lucky if we could still have him with us and allow him to enjoy life for just a year or two more, although, since I secretly thought that that part was absolutely possible (probable?), I shot for the stars by hoping and believing that Dad had a chance, maybe even a good chance, at being in the very exclusive group of people who “overcame” brain cancer. 

Dad was always a very practical person; he felt like thinking about far-fetched things like winning the lottery was a big waste of time; "Crazy Talk," he called it, when people spent time discussing what he considered to be outrageous ideas.  But even he joined in on our Bargaining Efforts.  For several days after his initial trip to the hospital, he thought he might still be able to compete in the Ironman triathlon that was two weeks away.  He talked about how he didn’t think taking a few days off from his intensive training regiment would affect his ability to finish the race, even though at that point the sensation on the left side of his body was so impaired that he couldn’t stand up or hold a utensil to feed himself.  He was convinced that as soon as he could get out of the hospital he would be ready to go back to work, without missing a beat.  Several doctors and nurses tried to talk to him about the certainty that he would need to take at least 6 weeks off just to recover from brain surgery, even if no follow-up treatment was necessary and even if he had no symptoms or health problems after the surgery.  Each time, he listened to the person’s spiel, but as soon as he or she turned their back or left the room, he winked at us or stage-whispered “That’s what they think!” to be sure we knew he wasn’t going to follow that plan! 

A couple of days after his surgery, when he was told that he had brain cancer, he said he knew he would need to take time to recover and then he planned to restart his training program and get back to work before his sick days ran out.  He asked me to contact the race organizer for the Ironman and see if he could get a deferment, which is athlete-speak for getting permission to enter the race the following year instead of the current year.  In the meantime, he said, he planned to do some smaller triathlons and to continue his training efforts by running, biking, and/or swimming on a daily basis.  He told us that he would just work from his home office for a couple of weeks so as not to get too far behind on that either.

At one point while he was in the hospital, his neurologist said that Dad would not be allowed to drive until he had been seizure-free for at least six months, and he actually told us out of Dad’s earshot that Dad might never be allowed to get behind the wheel again.  “Whatever!” Dad said after the guy left the room.  “If everybody’s going to be doing all of this Crazy Talk about me not driving, I guess I will just get a ride to work and to wherever else I need to go.  Or maybe I will just ride my bike; that would be a good workout!”

After hearing Dad talk about his plan to ride his bike to get to wherever he needed to go once he got out of the hospital, Mom told him that we'd have to see how safe he would be on his bike.  Dad waited until he thought she couldn't hear him and stage-whispered, "I'll just get one of my son-in-laws to put my racing bike on the spinner in the garage and help me on it, and then she'll see that I can ride just fine!"

About that same time, the oncologist informed us that Dad would probably need to get radiation every day for about six weeks as part of his follow-up treatment.  Dad hated that idea because it seemed inefficient to him; he didn’t understand why they couldn’t just “go for it” and give him a higher dose of radiation to get it over with more quickly.  He had a steady stream of negotiation going about that part of his treatment; he felt like it was not “doable” for him to be going to and from the hospital daily for that long or even just to be restricted from leaving town for all that time.  “It’s like I’m grounded,” he sulked when the radiation oncologist told him he couldn’t travel during the six weeks of radiation that was being planned.  "Oh, well, I guess I can do anything for six weeks if it means I'll get better," he offered, as his part of the negotiation.

In the weeks after that, going through rehab, the trip to the Brain Tumor Clinic at Duke, and two rounds of chemo, he shifted gears again and again, eventually giving up on the idea of competing and just hoping to be able to work out for fun.  He told several doctors, nurses, and therapists that he no longer believed exercising and eating right could keep a person healthy: “Look at me;” he said.  “I’m living proof that you’ve got to run or whatever just for the fun of it because it won’t necessarily keep you from getting brain cancer or anything else.” 

While Dad was in rehab and even at the Brain Tumor Clinic, when I looked around the waiting rooms and treatment areas and saw people who weren’t as changed as Dad was, who weren’t as impaired as he was, or who hadn’t been given such a devastating diagnosis or prognosis, I was like the skunk in that story; I would have given almost anything to get just a little something more for Dad, more hope, more function, more time, more fun, more independence, more quality of life. I just wanted for Dad to feel ok and to be happy for even a little while longer.  After awhile, I didn’t even dream of the possibility of his ever being just like he had been anymore; it was too far-fetched and I felt like that would have been asking for far too much given our situation.  It would have been Crazy Talk!